I didn't pick the volleyball team, but I know that the criteria was just to pick the top players regardless of position for volleyball and soccer. Football had position restrictions. I picked football and did worked some magic moving two-way guys around to positions that might have been their second-best just to make sure we had the best athletes possible on the team. With any of the teams we picked, some very talented athletes were left off.

You are absolutely right. The deadline for picking the team was early last week, so we could get everyone down for photos. Clint Galvas did another amazing job at New Lothrop and is still certainly worthy, but I would've picked Bob Buckel had I had the entire playoffs to go by.

It was a blast. I can't imagine doing it in the 22s like Curtis Vollmar and Kenny Wall, or in the 25s like Erin O'Mara. I know they're great runners, but I'm amazed they can fly through those obstacles like that. I slowed WAY DOWN on the climbing stuff just to be safe.

There is a mountain bike club that maintains these trails, but they are open to anybody. You just have to be alert for mountain bikes coming up from behind you. At Holdridge Lakes, you can usually hear them well in advance because of the twisting, turning nature of the trails. That also allows you to sometimes see them off to your left or right when they are a couple of turns away.

I've been on some trail runs where we counted more than 30 bikes on a 9-mile run. We constantly had to hop off to the side to let them through. Some mountain bikers don't yell anything to give you a heads-up they're coming, and they don't slow down when they're approaching. Most are great, though.

I love going to Holdridge Lakes because it is so close for those of us in the Flint area. It's a fairly technical trail. I recommend Island Lake in Brighton for anyone who is new to trail running.

The "they" in "they were not interested ..." referred to Hurley. I supposed I could have been more clear about that, but thought that the "not interested in trying to run a road race ANYMORE" phrase made it clear. I guess it wasn't clear to everyone. I could have put (Hurley) parenthetically in the quote to make it clearer.

Great. Now you guys let the cat out of the bag. I don't cover Carman-Ainsworth basketball because they have a good program and all the usual reasons. I cover them for the cookies and candy T-Money provides.

I'm not going to publish anything on the allegations about Kip Litton cheating. It's a very tricky subject to write about without creating potential problems. I will say that I do regret writing this piece. When I wrote it, I did not know about the circumstances surrounding these results. I saw the times and was impressed that any marathoner could nail all of his or her times within about a five-minute window without having one bad day in there, as happens to ALL marathoners. Perhaps there's a reason for such remarkable consistency ... and it's not remarkable at all.

The headline caught my eye. I'm thinking, "Are you kidding me?" Would a Republican governor be given a free pass because he was "dealt a bad hand"? Was this written before or after the news that Michigan is the only state to lose population since the last Census? Gov. Jen Jen presided over eight of the last 10 years.

Very predictable stuff from the liberal media. I haven't read enough of Peter Luke's writing to know if he's assigned to be a liberal commentator for Booth, which would make this kind of stuff OK even if totally off-base, or if he's paid to be an objective reporter. As someone in this business, I surely hope it's not the latter.

Unfortunately, this race isn't as organized as most races are today. No computer scoring, no computer results. The race organizers kind of like it being a throwback kind of race. The three miles isn't even really three miles, more like 2.9-ish.

You are exactly right, Leo. Howell is outside of our circulation area. If you went to Howell High School, we wouldn't "own" you at all. Your local tie is you went to Powers. If your local tie is you went to Linden, it would be the same thing. It's as simple as that.

Jon: My bad. I will fix that in the online version. I remember running near you early in the race and you said you were doubling up. Totally overlooked that. ... 6-2: If clicking on the option to enlarge the photo doesn't give you a large enough size (it's 900 px), you can order reprints by sending an e-mail to beng@boothmidmichigan.com

It's a challenge, first to finish your first one, then to either keep finishing them or to run them faster. At times, you question your own sanity, but you come back for more. By Saturday night, once I was back in the land of the living, I was already planning my training for a fall marathon to make sure I don't suffer like this again, heat or no heat.

Shane: I wish I did. That was amazing. We were on deadline at that point, so I wasn't videotaping. Once the game went to overtime, it was past our deadline and I had time to just turn on my Flip video recorder. Your boy scored a pretty sweet goal to win it.